Empire of Doom
by Gambit14
Summary: It is the Eighteenth Year of the Glorious Reign of Emperor Victor Von Doom, but it may well be the last. A long vanished enemy reappears, hostile alien races abound, and an angry god is born. Rated for some disturbing imagery.
1. Prologue

Reed put his hand to the wall, and spread it out across the surface, looking for even the tiniest crack he could exploit to escape. There was nothing- the room was airtight, which meant that he'd be unable to breathe in a few minutes. "Doom!" He shouted, "Come down and face me yourself!" It was his only hope, he realized- and likely that for the others as well. Doom had kidnapped Valeria, damn him, and brought her here. The Fantastic Four had followed, and in doing so, had strode directly into one of Doom's diabolical traps. Reed was certain that this adamantium room had been matched with an equally inescapable trap for the other three.

Then, the thing he had least expected occurred. The door slid open. It had been day when he had entered the room, but it was now the midst of the night. Obviously more time had passed than he had observed, and his keen mind immediately set to mind at finding a reason, even as his equally supple body prepared to meet any threat. His first thought was of some kind of mind altering gas. Certainly Doom would be capable of producing such, and of making it colorless and odorless, but had that been the case, Reed would have expected to awaken in chains, or in some more diabolical holding device. He also wouldn't have expected Doom to allow him to remain unconscious for so long.

As he was pondering this, he happened to glance at the sky, and was literally staggered by what he saw there, almost pitching onto his face. Whatever his faults might be when it came to names and sometimes important dates, Reed had a near photographic memory for any number of things, and the stars were one of them. The stars were extremely different than they had been the night before he had entered the room. Even as he reeled from this unexpected information, he carried out a series of complicated calculations in his head, the result of which left him even more surprised for an instant. "Twenty years…" the words seemed to fall from his lips of their own accord.

It was not, perhaps, so surprising when he took a moment to think about it. He had known for years that Doom had developed time traveling technology. The Baxter Building itself contained, or, more likely, had contained an early example of it. On the other hand, the surprise had never been the concept of time travel, or that it could be used by Doom, but rather the shock of knowing that the world had changed, seemingly in an instant, from what he had known. Now that he took a moment to more closely examine his surroundings, he found that much else had changed. What had been a sapling when he entered the door was now a tree taller than him. The sides of the wall were cracked and moss covered. It was most likely then, that he had in fact been sent approximately twenty years in time. That only left the question of what had happened in the meantime.

"I thought you would never arrive," a voice said, snapping him out of his reverie. He glanced towards the source, which, as it happened, was directly in front of him, but saw nothing there. An instant later, though, there was a young woman standing before him, wearing what appeared to be some form of blue military uniform, with her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Reed blinked, and once again spoke without meaning to. "Sue?" He said, for the woman was almost the exact image of his wife at that age. Then he realized that if this was twenty years in the future- a fact he had already accepted and was not ready to discard, Sue would be even further from this age than she had been a handful of moments and twenty years ago. With that realization, he was able to look at her shorn of his preconceptions, and see the dozens of subtle differences. The most striking was her eyes. Where Sue's were blue and incredibly round, these were brown, and there was a look of gears perpetually turning behind them. In short, they were his eyes. Reed Richards had always been good at math, and it didn't take him more than a few thousandths of a second to add two and two and come up with… "Valerie?!"

The woman- his daughter!- tilted her head to the side and looked at him quizzically. "Yes," she says, flatly, and there was none of the warmth, or even recognition, that he had expected. That made sense though, when he took a moment to think about it. After all, if he had been transported twenty years into the future she would have grown up without ever really knowing him. Though that was assuming that he had never returned, which was a worrying thought.

"You need to come with me," she said, and there was an urgent tone to her voice. Reed hesitated, but only for a moment. She was his daughter, damn it, even if she had no idea of who _he_ was. He nodded, and she turned and started sprinting through the long grass. Reed followed her, stretching his legs just enough to keep up easily. She glanced at his legs, and there was something familiar in her eyes. Almost at once he realized what it was. He had seen that look in his own eyes several times, glancing in some reflective piece of equipment, while he was deep into discovering why something worked the way it did.

"Where are we going?" He asked, glancing at the horizon. It was empty, though the moon was beginning to come up over it. Valerie certainly seemed to be in good physical shape, but even so, she surely couldn't keep up this frantic pace for very long. That meant that wherever they were headed had to be somewhere fairly close. Since there was nothing visible, that meant either an underground location or somewhere in the hills.

"Somewhere safe," responded Valerie, "Less talking, more running. We're almost out of time." Reed put the dozens of questions he still had on hold, and nodded once more. There had been no fear in Valerie's voice or expression as she spoke, but there had been a tightly controlled urgency that, through its simple and unemotional rationality, convinced Reed he was in danger far more effectively than gibbering terror or shrieking hysterics would have done. They ran in silence for some time, but then the moon was full overhead, and Valeria stopped short, muttering something under her breath. Reed couldn't hear it, but by the tone he was fairly certain it was something he didn't approve of any daughter of his saying.

"We're too late," she said, audibly. "I hope the stories about you weren't exaggerations." As she spoke, a shape rose up out of the ground. It bore a vague resemblance to a dog, in the same way that a grizzly bears a resemblance to a teddy bear. Red eyes glowed above slavering jaws, those suspended above a freakishly wide chest. Valeria moved, flicking the wrist of one hand as if throwing something, and the dog creature leapt back, blood trickling from its snout. Before Reed had time to consider this, there was a growling sound from all around, and he whirled, one arm darting out to strike another doglike creature in the chest. It fell backwards, and then there was no time for thought, even from Reed's keen brain. There was only a whirlwind of blows and desperate dodges.

In the end, it was not enough- the dog creatures seemed to be as innumerable as the now moved stars in the sky. Eventually one closed its jaws on Reed's arm, and though the fangs, be they ever so sharp, could not penetrate his elastic flesh, it seemed that the drool was acidic. His arm burnt, and he could not seem to free it, and then a dozen more of the creatures were on him, bearing him to the ground. Behind him, Valeria fought with an ever changing invisible weapon, but she was outnumbered, and, it seemed, as doomed as Reed himself.

Then, from the sky, came a bright ray of light, piercing the skull of one of the dog creatures intent on savaging Valeria. It was followed by more rays, soon so many and so close together that they seemed to transform the night to noon. The dog creatures, struck down by an enemy they could neither see nor comprehend, soon broke and fled howling into the night. A figure, clad in a cloak of a deep green, was helping Valerie to her feet. She threw her arms around him, and in doing so pushed the hood of the cloak back far enough that Reed could see the metal mask beneath. "Doom," he said- snarled, really, even as Valerie exclaimed "Father!"


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One:

Chapter One:

Reed had always been calm, collected, and analytical under pressure. He was seldom one for irrational emotional outbursts of any kind, especially when he was in danger. Now though, as he saw his daughter embracing his oldest and deadliest enemy, and worse, calling him father, that calm rationality evaporated like a drop of water poured into a roaring fire. Reed did not speak so much as let out an inarticulate sound of rage as he rushed towards Doom, one hand rearing back and seeming to melt, then reform into a spiked mallet.

Doom watched, and if he felt any concern behind that metal mask, it did not show in his voice. "Restrain him, Valerie. Gently." Valerie nodded, and stepped between them, raising one hand. All at once, Reed felt himself run into an invisible barrier. Almost immediately, he recognized the feel of it. That then, was how Valerie had seemed to fight with an invisible weapon. She had inherited her mother's powers. She was hardly likely to be as experienced with them, however, and Reed had sparred with Sue more than verbally. He stretched the surface of his hand until he could feel the entire force field, a perfect hemisphere around him. There were none of the imperfections he had been hoping for, but he had calmed himself enough by this point to try an alternate method.

He snapped his hand back to its original shape, and struck a point in the barrier with nearly all his force. A normal man's fist would have shattered at the blow, but his elastic bones allowed him to deliver it without any such trouble. Without stopping to check the effect on Valerie, he struck another point on the barrier, and then a third. He continued, in a careful pattern, before delivering the final blow, with his entire strength behind it. As if from a distance, he heard Valerie's cry as the feedback from the carefully placed blows caught up to her. She collapsed, but Doom caught her before she hit the ground.

"That was a mistake," he said, the cold fury in his voice cutting the air like a naked blade. He lowered Valerie to the ground, and came forward, not quickly, not slowly. If the years had affected Doom as they by all rights should have, his armor more than compensated for it. Reed swung at Doom, who caught his wrist without breaking stride and delivered an electric shock. Reed lost all control over his muscles, and practically melted into a formless shape on the ground. His last sight was of Doom standing over him, raising one hand. Then there was nothing.

--

When Reed awoke he was lying on something soft and warm- a mattress, he suspected. He was also no longer a sort of solid puddle. Before opening his eyes, he ran through a mental checklist. He seemed to be uninjured, except for a faint ache from the dog creatures' acidic saliva. Experimentally, he tried stretching his fingers. Nothing happened. Reed nodded to himself. It was not the first time Doom had contrived some device to rob the Fantastic Four of their powers. Only then did he open his eyes, to find that he was indeed lying on a bed, and a luxurious one at that.

The first thing he noticed when he _did_ open his eyes was the general opulence of his surroundings. That was his cue in the game Doom was playing then. Doom would act as though Reed was his honored guest, at least until his trap was sprung, and perhaps even afterwards. That was good in some ways, as it would give him a while in which he was not actively fighting for his life to try and discover what was happening. It was bad in that it meant Doom had some other plan for him, rarely a good thing.

The second thing he noticed was the man sitting in a chair at the end of the bed, patiently watching him. There was something familiar about the man, but Reed couldn't place him immediately. He soon realized, however, that the problem was trying to think of someone who looked like this man, who couldn't have been more than thirty. Mentally, he subtracted roughly twenty years, and blinked at the small child that resulted. "Kristoff?"

"Still as astute as ever," Kristoff said, "But then, I suppose it has not been so long for you. Now, as undoubtedly have noticed, your powers are not working. I am not going to explain the mechanism to you, for the simple reason that I fully believe you'd be capable of finding a way to counter it, but I will tell you this much- I am capable of returning your powers to you, if we should come to an equitable agreement. Now, I imagine you have any number of questions for me. Ask away, and I will answer any that would not be treasonous."

"Twenty years have passed since I went into that room," Reed said. "How?" He was fairly certain he knew already, but he had to be certain if he was going to find a way of doing anything about it. Besides, it would hardly hurt for Kristoff to underestimate. And surely enough Kristoff looked somewhat surprised at the question.

"Time travel, of course," he replied. "The safest way, for all involved, to keep you out of the way for twenty years. Father had had time travel technology for years, even then, and so, when he decided to remove you from the board, it was the obvious choice."

"When he decided to remove me from the board," Reed said, musing. "Why then? As you said, he had access to transtemporal technology a long time before he decided to use it. Why should he have only chosen to use it then?"

"Until then," said Kristoff seriously, rising and taking a few steps away from Reed before turning to face him. "He had needed you. You always had an honored place in Father's plans, Richards. You were the measure he tested himself against, the foe who forced him to better himself. Father could never have been a normal man, but without you, he would not have been transcendent."

Reed let the odd choice of words pass. "Then why would he temporally dislocate me when he did? What changed, that he no longer needed me to test himself against?" As he spoke, Reed took note of a large device on Kristoff's wrist. It was much too large to be a watch, especially taking into account twenty further years of miniaturization. Nor did it appear to be any sort of directed energy weapon. Reed continued examining it as Kristoff answered.

"Father was ready to enter the next stage of his preparations, and by the same merit that had made you a worthy foe to pit himself against, you were an unacceptable threat to his consolidation of power. You should feel flattered, Richards. You were the only man he considered such a threat."

Reed shook his head. "Can I have a moment, please?" He asked. "To… adjust to this, I suppose." Kristoff nodded, rose, and left, and Reed immediately went to work.

--

"Report, my son," said Doom, sitting upon a throne carved from the living rock of Mount Diablo. A dozen images flashed on the inside of the lenses of his helmet, allowing him to control everything from the price of tea in the East Asian Administrative Region, to the weather in Australia, to the positioning of forces light years away. In one screen, Kristoff sat straight, looking, for all the world, like a schoolboy called upon to recite a lesson.

"He is beginning to understand his situation, Father," Kristoff said, "Though he has by no means accepted it yet."

"You understand what is required next?" Doom asked. "No, of course you do. You are my son. Nevertheless, remember, he must believe that he is acting of his own free will." Kristoff nodded, and turned to go, but Doom spoke again. "Kristoff- be cautious. He is a formidable foe, now, having nothing to lose, more than ever." Kristoff nodded again, and deactivated the communications window.

--

Once Kristoff was gone, the first thing Reed had done was find the camera he was sure was watching him. It was larger than he had expected, but then, it was bound to be far from the only one. Still, it had the circuitry he needed. The lamp, a large brass affair, provided the casing, and some more circuitry, as well, after some hurried MacGyvering, as a power supply via the wall socket.

When Kristoff walked through the door, Reed was ready, and a beam of energy crackled out from the newly made weapon, and struck him in the wrist. As Reed had expected, the suit of high-tech armor contained therein expanded out slightly. Enough to encumber Kristoff, but not enough to offer any serious protection. Reed dropped the lamp and attacked. Kristoff was in the prime of his life, and obviously an expert hand to hand combatant. Still, he was handicapped by the partially extended armor, and he had just received an unhealthy dose of electricity. Reed was able to throw him off balance and move out the door past him.

To his surprise, he found he knew where he was. It was a castle Doom had acquired in Symkaria, one Reed had been in several times before over the years of conflict with Doom. He immediately set out at a dead run for what he was almost certain was the exit. It wasn't long before there was someone pursuing him. Several someones, in fact, judging by the sounds, although Reed didn't waste his energy looking back.

He needed a way out, and quickly. Then, suddenly, he had it. If only Doom or Kristoff hadn't taken it! He reached into an inside pocket of his suit, and, sure enough, there it was. A small rod, carved with runic text. Thor had given it to him some time ago, saying to break it if he ever needed sanctuary in Asgard. He snapped it now and disappeared in a blinding flash of lightning and crash of thunder.

When his vision cleared, he continued blinking, hoping that what he saw was only a hallucination, brought about by his considerable stress. There was no such luck. Before him, the walls of might Asgard, home of the Norse Gods, were crumbled, and the city laid waste.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter One:

Reed walked through the once proud city of Asgard in a daze. It wasn't quite true that no stone stood atop another- whoever had done this had left just enough of several buildings standing that it was possible to recognize that this had indeed once been the mighty Asgard, if the Bifrost Bridge, left untouched, hadn't been enough to be certain. There were no signs of life, or even of death, merely the destruction of the city.

Reed examined the city, trying to determine what exactly had happened here. The answers he found, however, only raised more questions. Here was an area in what had once been a park, where the grass had been burnt away and the dirt melted to glass. Not far away, there was a hole in a wall consistent with a man sized object being flung at it with incredible force.

He saw something glinting in the dust, and knelt down to pick it up. A playing piece of some sort, wrought out of gold. He let it drop from his fingers, as he suddenly heard labored breathing. He moved quickly, and then broke into a run as the breathing became a strangled shout. He was sprinting by the time he came into a large courtyard, and stopped dead, shocked by what he was seeing.

Reed had always had trouble accepting the Aesir as actual gods- or the Olympians for that matter, or any of the other pantheons his team had encountered over the years. Nevertheless, he had always considered Thor a good friend and a staunch ally, and, he had had to admit, there was definitely something about him and the other Aesir that spoke of a level above humanity.

It was in no small part this that led to him being so stunned by what he was seeing. The rest was simple compassion at seeing any living being, especially a sentient one, especially one he knew, laid low in such a manner. This courtyard, apparently, was where the final battle between the attacking forces and the Aesir. Armor littered the ground, all of the Asgardian style, and blood was spread across the ground in frightening amounts.

That was far from the worst, however. That singularly dubious honor belonged to the sight on the huge wall immediately opposite for him. Fully ten score Asgardians were there, run through and impaled on swords, spears, even the wooden haft of an axe. He recognized the Warriors Three; One Handed Tyr; Heimdall, the guardian of Bifrost; Swift Hermod, but there were more that he had never met or heard of.

The sons of Asgard are a hearty breed, and some had survived the injuries, as Reed could see by the slow labor of their chests. One, Hogun the Grim of the Warriors Three, managed to lift his head and look at Reed. "Richards," he said, and then started coughing, an awful noise.

Reed took a step forward, and examined the spear more closely. He wasn't primarily a medical doctor, but he could tell that Hogun's injuries were less serious than those of the others. A long cut across his torso had spilt blood over his dark clothing, but it was scarred over now, and he, at least, had only been pinned to the wall by two halves of a broken sword through his hands, instead of his chest or stomach. Still, he was obviously dehydrated and painfully thin.

Reed hurriedly pulled the swords out and set Hogun on the ground. Ever since a day, roughly two years before he had been flung into the future, when Ben, transforming back into his human form at an inopportune time, had been shot and nearly bled out before Johnny could reach a hospital with him, Reed had required the entire team to carry emergency first aid kits. It was the work of only a few moments to clean and bandage Hogun's wounds, and once Reed was certain that he was, for the moment, stabilized, he went off to find a source of water.

As he had thought, there was a river running through the park he had passed through earlier, and he fetched back a canteen of water, mixing in a packet of sugars and salts meant to help restore electrolytes. He held the resulting mixture to Hogun's lips, and the warrior drank it thankfully. "Thank you," he said, rising painfully to his feet. Already, he seemed to be recovering.

"That is all I needed, to be off that accursed wall. Now go! Find Odinson!" There was an element of command in his voice that Reed had never heard from him before, and, without thinking, he obeyed. He did not know what guided his footsteps, but he found himself heading towards the center of the city, where Yggdrasil, the world tree, pierced the earth and heavens both, connecting all the worlds of the Norse mythos.

Suspended from this tree, upside down, by a spear through his chest, was Thor. He bled from scores of wounds, and his face was twisted in agony. Yet he was breathing, gasping for air with every breath. Reed rushed forward to free him, but a voice in his ear hissed "Stop!" Reed froze, and then whirled around, but there was no one there.

"Loki," he said, "Where are you hiding yourself? Is this your doing?"

"No, not my doing," said Loki's voice, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere. "I never wanted Asgard leveled, Reed Richards. I never wanted this. I only wanted to rule it. The blame for this lies rather closer to home. Your home, that is, Richards, not mine. As for where I am, well, when Asgard fell, I was fighting in the front lines. As punishment, when we were swept from the field, I was once again bound at the ends of this world, with a serpent dripping venom on me. For which reason it is important that we expedite this little talk. My faithful wife will soon have to empty her bowl, and then I will be unable to keep in touch."

"Why shouldn't I free Thor?" Contested Reed. "If you fought alongside him, you should be happy at the return of so much power to your forces."

"Nothing would delight me more," said Loki dryly, "But there are greater forces still at work here. If we are to have any chance of success when our attacker returns, we shall need the Runes. Given that Odin was cast down into Hel while he slept, the only chance we have right now is if my dear brother completes the trial, and finishes out nine years on that tree."

"I thought it was nine days," countered Reed.

"He speaks the truth," said Thor, abruptly, his eyes snapping open. "My father hung nine days from this tree, but it is not enough merely to equal his feat. I must surpass it, and so win from him the right to the power of the runes." His eyes drifted closed again almost before he had finished speaking.

"Return to Earth, Richards," said Loki, not unkindly. "There are things to come here that would snap any mortal mind, even yours, like a twig, and rend your soul from your spirit. Go home." Reed paused for a long moment, and then nodded, and turned to return to Bifrost. First, though, he stopped in the courtyard, where he was surprised to find that all of the Aesir had been removed from the wall. Many had been covered with makeshift funeral shrouds, but others were resting on the ground, being tended by those less wounded than themselves.

"Asgard owes you a greater debt than ever," said Tyr, who seemed almost wholly recovered. "So long as we remained on that wall, we were helpless, but now we can mourn those who are dead, and prepare to avenge them." He clapped his hand on Reed's shoulder.

"Who did this?" Reed asked. "Who has this sort of power? To level Asgard, to defeat the Aesir… who was it?"

"I do not know his true name," said Tyr, slowly. "He called himself Aeshma, but I know Aeshma, and it was not he."

"I know who it was," said Loki's voice. "As should you Richards. After all it was your-" his words were cut off in a shriek of pain, and then there was silence.

"He suffers again," said Tyr. "I helped to bind him so, once, but he fought well beside us, and does not deserve it now. Go home Richards. We have dead to burn, and a fight to prepare for. It may well be a hopeless one, but when before has stopped us?"

Reed nodded, wearily, and turned once more to Bifrost. Crossing it, as ever, seemed to take at once forever and no time at all, and he emerged, oddly enough, at the base of the Statue of Liberty. He glanced up at it, happy to see that this, at least had not changed, and then saw the figure that stood facing it across the water. It was as large as the Colossus of Rhodes had been rumored to be, large enough that ships could pass beneath its legs without danger. The size was not what most captured his attention though. That honor belonged to the face, for he recognized the face as that of Doom, before he had been scarred.


End file.
